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OliveTapenade


				

				

				
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joined 2022 October 24 22:33:41 UTC

				

User ID: 1729

OliveTapenade


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 October 24 22:33:41 UTC

					

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User ID: 1729

My first question about that tweet, actually, is who wrote it.

Perhaps this is just guessing too much based on a vibe, but it doesn't look like Trump. That isn't how Trump expresses himself. He's not that laconic, and it doesn't have any of the obvious signs of Trump, like the capitalised words, the hyperbole, or even the insults.

Is this Trump, or is this some executive staffer with access to his Twitter? Whose thought is this? This sounds like the conclusion of someone dwelling on political philosophy - it's roughly the same thought as "the constitution is not a suicide pact", which I've heard from every side of politics before. This kind of reflection on the meaning of politics and the legitimate exercise of political power is not something I've really seen from Trump himself before either.

What makes you think Victoria wasn't really Prince Edward's daughter?

Yep, that's what I was going for. It's possible I've expressed myself poorly, but the point I wanted to make was to separate out the FAA issue itself from one's judgement of its author.

EDIT: according to @ahobata, he wasn't even the first to report on this, and one the Internet's infamous noticers beat him to it by a month. So can you explain to me, why is this case supposed to be so embarrassing to the anti-woke?

I don't believe I said anything about the anti-woke as a general category? Honestly, I think that if you're Chris Rufo or James Lindsay, the best response to TW's FAA story is to just applaud. Just say, "Yes, this is what we're talking about."

That's nice, but tell, if more people listened to him during the elections, would there be anything being done against the DEI issue?

I am sure that if Kamala Harris were president right now, there would still be lots of people doing anti-DEI advocacy, and TW would no doubt be among them. I do not believe that he would have changed his mind about or refused to engage in the FAA reporting if Harris were president.

I disagree, he very clearly is a partisan in the sense that he'll argue to vote for the Democrats over a Republican that's actually active on the culture war front, regardless of how much he will chastise the Democrats for not doing what he wants.

That just sounds to me like you think it's partisan to cast a vote at all. Yes, he voted for a candidate that he hated but considered on balance less bad than the other one. But that's what most people do. I would say that a 'partisan' for a particular party or candidate is someone who spends significant time or effort boosting that party or candidate - and since TW has spent much more criticising the Democrats or Harris than boosting them, I don't consider him a partisan for them. I think he just made the decision that, in a presidential election, which is ultimately a binary choice, he found them less bad than the alternative.

Again, I disagree. You can't beat me over the head with "TW was right" if he effectively wanted to convince people to have the issue continue.

I think the fact that he was actively and effectively working to expose and address the issue undermines your point here. You don't need to vote for Donald Trump to oppose DEI. It is possible to take the position, "DEI is bad, Harris' support for DEI is bad, but on balance Harris is less bad than Trump, so I will vote for Harris while continuing to advocate against DEI".

Trump voters can make the exact same move - such-and-such policy is bad, Trump supports the bad policy, but I think that on balance Trump is less bad than Harris, so I will vote for Trump and continue to advocate against the bad policy. You do not have to agree with a candidate on every single issue to judge that candidate preferable at the ballot box.

This was actually an example in Scott's 'Varieties of Argumentative Experience', under the 'Single Facts' heading.

If it's not about praising him, can you explain to me why the sentence "TracingWoodgrains was right" is so important to you?

As here:

What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.

The top-level post that I was responding to was about liberals who try to minimise the story or attack TW for giving cover to the (ex hypothesi bad and fascist) Trump administration; and I was reading lots of comments here criticising TW for being a centrist Democrat who continues to believe that Trump is bad. I was saying that in the context of all these "who? whom?" arguments, it is worth allowing all of ourselves the sober reminder that what he said was both true and normatively right. That's the ball that we should keep our eyes on.

Like I said, I'm not interested in making this a referendum on his character. You don't have to accept anything he says on any other subject. That's your own lookout. What I'm saying is that in a context where so many responses to TW's FAA reporting and advocacy are attempts to deflect, to either minimise the issue or to ad hominem the man himself, it is worth the firm reminder that what he has said about the FAA's hiring procedures is true.

Presumably the difference would be that the state invests a lot of effort in disincentivising smoking, alcoholism, and obesity. All of those are understood to be important public health issues and the state does what it can to discourage them. There aren't anti-promiscuity campaigns on the same order as anti-smoking campaigns.

One might argue that there are state sexual health campaigns, so safe sex is analogous to moderate drinking, if that counts?

As I said, it doesn't matter whether you like him or not. Nor do I care whether or not you praise him. The merits of TW as an individual are beside the point. The point is the issue itself.

I submit that TW is right about the issue, and that he has done a better job of bringing this particular issue to the public attention than anybody on the Motte, much less James Lindsay or Chris Rufo. Rufo has probably been more effective as an anti-woke activist in general, but on the FAA hirings scandal specifically - movement there is because of TW. He notes this himself.

And yes, he voted for Harris. He voted for Harris while publicly and passionately expressing his dissatisfaction with her, and after the election, he went on to continue to explain his problems with her, and what he thinks the Democrats ought to do, which means that I think this portrayal of him as some kind of bootlicking Democrat partisan is absurd. He made a judgement that, as much as he disliked Harris, he found her on balance the less-bad candidate that Donald Trump. If you want to blame him for literally everying that Harris or her political faction ever advocated for, then by the same logic we must blame every Trump voter for literally everything that Trump or his political faction ever advocated for. That is a lunatic standard to hold any voter to.

And even so, it is irrelevant, because whatever you think of TW's choice in the 2024 election, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the FAA hiring scandal or his activism thereabouts.

On the issue - he is right. You don't have to praise him. You don't have to like him. But he is right about the FAA.

Well said. I might borrow 'the tyrannies of unreason' - that's an excellent phrase.

I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say here beyond, "TracingWoodgrains is just right."

He's just right! There's no way to justify a norm like "never criticise bad things if my side is responsible". That's unironically the sort of logic that gets you the Great Leap Forward, where lower-ranking officials are afraid to report anything that goes against the narrative preferred by the higher-ups, and the result is always disastrous.

Set aside what you think about him as a person. On the specific issue here, he is just unambiguously correct.

The fact that people whose brains have been eaten by partisanship and culture war are unable to see that, whether that be lefties who have to deny and distract and minimise the scandal because it's going to be a win for the right, or whether it be righties who cannot possibly grant that a hated outsider did a better job of identifying and advocating for an issue that should have been an easy win for them, is really their own problem.

TracingWoodgrains is right.

Everything else is distraction.

It seems to me that support for a candidate can be more nuanced than either 100 or 0. If you're a right-wing Trump voter, a centrist Democrat like TW is clearly closer to you on many issues than a far-left socialist. Singling out the people who are most likely to listen to you or support you on some issues seems unproductive to me. In all ways other than the simple vote, which can only express one end of a binary, TW is working to drag the Democrats as far towards the centre as possible. I'd say the most productive thing to do is take Trump's win and try to use it as an opportunity to attract swayable centrists and increase the strength of the coalition.

That's a very subjective call - I would say that RTwP was the central mechanical pillar of Baldur's Gate, so making a BG game without it feels like missing something essential. At any rate, I massively prefer RTwP to pure turn-based, and I feel RTwP better represents the flow of actual gameplay in tabletop D&D (where you do actually speed up, slow down, skip or rush at times, and then go moment by moment when it matters). It was therefore a design choice that both suggested to me firstly that BGIII isn't very interested in imitating its predecessors, and secondly that it not be to my tastes.

As to sex... certainly Ed Greenwood was a dirty old man, and always has been. (I have no idea what you're referencing with canon, though I would not be surprised if Greenwood has gone on to say free-love things on the internet. For however much you think that's worth.) However, Greenwood was never the only person who worked on Forgotten Realms, and in particular Baldur's Gate comes out of 90s, TSR-era AD&D, which had deliberately put more emphasis on narrative, worldbuilding, and indeed morality. That was the peak of the Paladins & Princesses era of D&D, and it showed.

It's not even the presence of snark by itself - BG1 and BG2 contain plenty of jokes. There are also plenty of characters who use casual language. This page over-selects for comedy, but even so, there is a lot of casual silliness. Lines like, "For someone who supposedly has her soul tainted by the evil of a dead god, you remind me considerably of a chipmunk with a sugar high and a death wish" easily fit that kind of Reddit or Twitter-informed search for a perfect one-liner.

Even so, I think you can still tell that the writing culture of 1998 or 2000 was very different to that of 2023. I think for me a lot of it is worldbuilding as well? One of BG2's advantages was that it is substantially based on the 1997 boxed set Lands of Intrigue, and that set had quite good writing and a level of detail and verisimilitude that the game could make use of.

I also wonder if it was the intended audience as well? Not to go full GamerGate, but in 1998 and 2000, the hold of progressive ideology over the American video game industry was not yet complete, and I feel like there was at least the aspiration still to make games for a wide audience, and one less politically polarised than today.

He voted for Harris while loudly and publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with Harris and trying with all his might to drag the Democrats towards the centre. Personally I find his denunciation of Harris considerably more brutal than that of most people on the right - there is a deep bitterness there.

I think that ought to contextualise any reading of TW as defender of woke politics or far-left Democrats.

I've avoided BG3 myself, despite being a massive fan of BG1 and BG2. The shift from RTwP to pure turn-based is huge, and as far as I can tell BG3 is a 5e game, not an AD&D2e game - and I mean that in terms of atmosphere, themes, and writing style, not just mechanics.

And as far as I can tell, yep, BG3 is pretty woke. I remember when the jokes/memes about sex with a bear were going around, but beyond that, it strikes me as very much a post-Critical-Role type of D&D, focused on misfit characters and with a lot of snark. It just does not look like Baldur's Gate to me, in any way, and to be honest I rather resent the fact that it claims the title.

Okay, so you're a single issue voter on trans education for kids?

Um, well, then I guess I'd suggest that firstly you take the win you've just had, secondly avail yourself of the many options there are available in America to avoid any risk of trans education for kids (there are private schools, religious schools, home-schooling, etc.), and thirdly get involved civically to advocate for your views, like going to PTA meetings, running for school boards, and so on.

You will notice that none of that has anything whatsoever to do with TracingWoodgrains, and also that nothing TW has said or done prevents you from doing it. He's not collateral damage here. There's no need to single him out. The last I checked he was endorsing the Enlightened Centrist Manifesto on trans issues, and that manifesto is deliberately a fair distance away from the woke dogmatists you're criticising. But TW's work isn't even about trans. As he himself admits, he rarely talks about them. His big project for a while has been the FAA hiring scandal, and that sounds like an issue where you'd probably be on the same side. So why bother hating somebody who is more likely to be your ally?

Moreover, this whole discussion was about liberalism as a social order, and actually nothing you've said touches on that. You are wholly free to advocate against kids being exposed to anything trans, and to send your kids to wholly trans-free educational institutions. You have those rights under liberalism. You might not have them under an illiberal system. So it seems as if you've attacked the wrong target here.

You can be opposed to trans stuff around kids. I agree with that, actually! I wouldn't want my kids to see any of that! But I don't see how that gets you to either singling out TW, or attacking liberalism.

It looks to me like you suggested that liberalism was just a "stalking horse" used to destroy society. Oats asked the question - if liberalism goes away, what happens to people like me, or TracingWoodgrains?

At that point you then replied with "I don't care what happens to a gay furry".

But the question was about what happens to people like Oats, or people like you. You can be apathetic towards TW, but he was never the central point. The point was your future. You want to work on a project of supporting your family's future? That's the point.

I mean, obviously TW's project or Oats' project isn't to destroy your family. I very much doubt they care. But the question about whether destroying liberalism will be better or worse for you and your family is a valid one, and no amount of yelling boo furries addresses that. Here's what Oats said:

This problem extends a lot farther than Trace, obviously. Do you think China fosters the type of environment that makes this type of forum possible? For how niche it is, for how many types of people post here, for how many ideas can be represented here, this website itself and everyone in it is a product of liberalism. Do you care what happens to it? Do you care what happens to everyone who uses it? Do you care what happens to yourself?

It's all very well and good to rant about liberalism, but it seems like many of the things you value, including your ability to express yourself right now, are products of liberalism. Remove liberalism, and maybe all that goes away. What's your alternative?

Is this just 'gay furry' as thought-terminating cliché? Heck, why do you keep bringing him at all? Why does TracingWoodgrains live rent-free in your head? He was brought up by someone else a few posts up as an example of someone who, whether you like his hobbies or not, has a place in the body politic, and oats then clarified that his point is to do with oddballs and dissenters of all kinds.

The point is not about TracingWoodgrains specifically, or about homosexuality, or about people who like to wear silly fox costumes, and cannot be addressed by going "lol I hate that guy". Oats' point terminated in the question, "Do you care what happens to yourself?"

Maybe you hope for a world in which the hammer of state power comes down on TracingWoodgrains and not on yourself, but that sure sounds like an awfully precise hammer - the type that squishes one specific type of online oddball but not any other type. How sure are you that a world that crushes one guy who posts spicy takes on obscure online discussion forums isn't going to crush another guy who posts spicy takes on obscure online discussion forums?

This conversation started out being about liberalism, not empathy. Whether you like so-and-so isn't really the point. But you're using "screw the gay furry" as an evasion. The point is - okay, sure, you can reject liberalism. You can reject the social compact that allows everyone from you to furries to coexist and even have their own discussion spaces like this. But if you reject it you open the door to a lot of boots stomping on a lot of faces, and maybe you shouldn't be so confident that the boots aren't going to be stomping on you.

If nothing else, your views seem significantly more repulsive to random normies than those of gays or furries or, heaven forbid, gay furries. Maybe a little caution is called for.

I'd argue that by the standards of 1914, Germany was a relatively liberal power.

I'm actually not all that convinced that the deck was as stacked as you think - it's a mistake to just look at a map and assume that the amount of colour on the map is directly proportional to military power. Germany didn't have a huge colonial empire, but it was a large, rapidly industrialising European power with a lot of human capital, which had also militarily embarrassed France relatively recently in the 1870s. I don't look at French West Africa and therefore assume that metropolitan France should have had an insurmountable military advantage over Germany, its larger and more populous neighbour, with access to the same technological base.

But at any rate, let's grant that Germany overperformed in WWI and WWII. Is that enough to conclude that liberal states militarily underperform? That seems like a lot to generalise fron a single example, particularly considering that WWI Germany arguably was a liberal state, and that illiberal states (Austria, Russia, the Ottomans) also put in noticeably poor showings. If we grant that Britain and France underperformed, that seems less like liberal states being weaker, and more like... well, everybody underperforming relative to Germany. Maybe Germany just had really good fundamentals, or lucked into a few military geniuses and associated reforms, or something else. My point is that the pattern doesn't seem to be "liberal weak, illiberal/autocratic strong". At best the pattern is "Germany strong".

That is, however, a single example, and I am wary of drawing strong conclusions from single examples. For instance, if we go back a century (plus a half, if you're counting from WWII), we find Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, which was undoubtedly the most liberal country in Europe by a massive margin, and their decades-long overperformance. If you were generalising from the period 1790-1810 or so, where France took on pretty much the entire rest of Europe and kicked them around one by one, you might be tempted to conclude that liberalism is a kind of cheat code to military supremacy.

I'm just not seeing a strong general correlation between a liberal constitution and military underperformance.

Certainly Germany did very well in WWI, but Germany was also the most liberal of the Central Powers. Austria and the Ottomans both gave middling to poor performances, and on the Entente side, it was the most autocratic power, Russia, that performed worst. This strikes me as a data point against any reactionary theory that autocracies are more militarily capable than liberal states.

Depending on how you count them, you might also count the Russian Revolution and the Turkish war of independence - while neither set of revolutionaries were a liberal dream, both seemed to perform much better on the battlefield than the autocracies they overthrew.

Trace may be moderate for a democrat but he is a naked partisan for his side, waging the culture war and openly promoting total democrat conquest over the other side. He just believes that the most extreme fringe of his party needs to be reformed in order to achieve this victory.

How is this distinguished from just advocating for his preferred policies and outcomes, exactly the same way as everybody else?

Is there anyone who isn't a partisan for their own side, or promoting total conquest of their own side?

What's your explanation for WWI, then? The autocratic Russian and Austro-Hungarian states embarrassed themselves repeatedly, and on the Western Front, Germany wasn't all that different to France or Britain. A theory of liberal military weakness, and presumably autocratic strength, would seem to suggest that autocracy ought to correlate with positive military performance. But that seems more like the opposite of what we see in WWI.

I don't for a second believe that there's any chance of that happening, or even that Trump really intends to do it. Trump likes extravagant opening bids that he then immediately backs down from - as we've just seen with Canada and Mexico.

He's saying something absurd to grab attention and so that he can barter down from it later. I do not take it literally or even very seriously.

You made a general claim, though, that Muslims will never be - and are in fact forbidden to be - charitable towards non-Muslims. That's not the case. On the doctrinal or dogmatic level, sadaqah is permitted and indeed considered praiseworthy, and sadaqah can be directed towards anybody.

There are some rules about zakat, yes, though depending on the specific Islamic community those rules may be interpreted in different ways, or more or less stringently. One fatwa rarely proves very much, because a fatwa is just an opinion by a scholar, and scholars regularly disagree. Even in this case, the objection to giving zakat to a hospital in a generic sense is that the Qur'an lists the proper recipients of zakat, and hospitals aren't among them. (The needy are, but obviously you can't assume that any given hospital is needy - there are wealthy hospitals and wealthy patients.) The website you've linked says:

Now that we know the eight categories to whom zakah may be given, zakah should not be spent on other interests, whether public or private. Based on this, we should not use zakah to build mosques, repair roads, build libraries and so on, because when Allah mentioned the categories of those to whom zakah may be given, He said (interpretation of the meaning): “a duty imposed by Allah. And Allah is All-Knower, All-Wise” i.e., these categories have come as an obligation from Allah. “And Allah is All-Knower, All-Wise.”

Obviously Muslims are not forbidden to build mosques, repair roads, or build libraries. (Who else would build a mosque, anyway?) They're just not to use the zakat funds for that, because zakat is earmarked for something else.

Now I take it your objection is to zakat being earmarked for Muslims specifically.

The first thing to say is that the linked page explicitly allows non-Muslims to benefit from zakat funds in some circumstances (for instance, it mentions using zakat to buy and free even a non-Muslim slave, especially if there is hope he may become Muslim; or paying zakat to "an evil man... so as to ward off his evil from the Muslims"). However, it is in general true that the point of zakat is the aid and succour of the Islamic community.

It is... unclear to me why that it is immediately forbidden. The money in the church collection plate will be used to benefit the church. If you donate money to a Buddhist temple or to a synagogue, you may reasonably assume it will be used for Buddhist or Jewish causes.

Zakat is not the sum total of Islamic charity, so I guess I don't find it obvious evidence of the evil or perfidy of Islam that Muslims donate a certain amount of money to help other Muslims.

Now, it might be true that, structurally as it were, Islam is less inclined to donate money or labour for the humanitarian benefit of non-Muslims. That's the sort of thing that I plausibly expect would differ between religions - for instance, Christianity and Buddhism both have strong, explicit ethics of universal beneficence and are involved in global aid societies, whereas not all religions might be like that. I'm not immediately aware of any good comparative figures on charitable giving by religion; I suspect it might be confounded a lot by firstly religious people who give to secular causes and don't record their religious motivation, and secondly the fact that different religions are not evenly distributed socio-economically, so religions that tend to have wealthier adherents might show up as more generous. But I'll have a look around later today and see if I can find anything.

The first result Google gave me suggests that in the US, Jews are the most charitable, followed by Protestants, and then Muslims and Catholics are neck-and-neck for the third, and it suggests that Jews and Muslims tend to favour secular organisations, while Christians favour religious organisations. But I imagine that is heavily confounded as well (if nothing else Christian charities are much more common and comprehensive in the US). This page is unsourced but suggests that Christians are the most generous, followed by Sikhs and Muslims, but offers no source. More searching to come.

That would seem to be an anticipated problem for a religious tradition whose most sacred text says plainly, "The poor you will always have with you." (Mark 14:7, Matthew 26:11) The number of people in need of charity is functionally unlimited - that was the case in Jesus' day, in Aquinas' day, and also in our day.

I take the ordo amoris to be suggesting some structure to our moral duties such that we are not crushed entirely flat by the weight. This much seems right and just. But within that structure, it can hardly be bad to seek to do more than the barest minimum.

Aquinas was familiar with international charity. Thomas Aquinas lived in the mid 13th century. By his day, international projects like the Crusades were a century and a half old, and among the justifications for the Crusades had been charity - that it is an act of gracious generosity to one's fellow-believers who are in need, even though they may be on the other side of a continent.

The idea of giving charitable aid to people a long way away from you geographically goes back as far as the New Testament itself - for instance, in 1 Corinthians 16:25-28, Paul talks about his plan to bring donations from churches in Achaia and Macedonia all the way to Jerusalem. Aquinas was surely familiar with such cases.

So I don't think we can assume that Aquinas' model of charity assumes only local charity. He understood and approved of the idea of a Christian making great sacrifices in order to aid Christians in another country entirely.

Now, sure, this doesn't necessarily equate to "on the hook for everyone suffering in the third world" - that's an exaggeration or caricature. What I'm saying is that Aquinas' interpretation of the ordo amoris plainly allows for charity to people with whom the giver is not personally familiar. For Aquinas, proximity is one among several factors influencing who it is appropriate to give charity to, alongside need, holiness, and the common good more generally. These are criteria that allow for international projects in some circumstances.

Aquinas does think that having something in common with the needy is important. This comes up further in the next section of the Summa:

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 28): "Since one cannot do good to all, we ought to consider those chiefly who by reason of place, time or any other circumstance, by a kind of chance are more closely united to us."

I answer that, Grace and virtue imitate the order of nature, which is established by Divine wisdom. Now the order of nature is such that every natural agent pours forth its activity first and most of all on the things which are nearest to it: thus fire heats most what is next to it. In like manner God pours forth the gifts of His goodness first and most plentifully on the substances which are nearest to Him, as Dionysius declares (Coel. Hier. vii). But the bestowal of benefits is an act of charity towards others. Therefore we ought to be most beneficent towards those who are most closely connected with us.

Now one man's connection with another may be measured in reference to the various matters in which men are engaged together; (thus the intercourse of kinsmen is in natural matters, that of fellow-citizens is in civic matters, that of the faithful is in spiritual matters, and so forth): and various benefits should be conferred in various ways according to these various connections, because we ought in preference to bestow on each one such benefits as pertain to the matter in which, speaking simply, he is most closely connected with us. And yet this may vary according to the various requirements of time, place, or matter in hand: because in certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.

You will notice that, having established the principle that one owes more to people with whom one has a commonality, Aquinas then goes on to explain two things. Firstly, that 'closeness' has several measures, including natural, civic, and spiritual matters. Thus he might argue that, for instance, a fellow Christian in another country is spiritually close and has a stronger claim on a Christian's aid than a non-believer. Secondly, this does vary contextually, such that, as he says, a stranger in desperate need may have a higher claim on charity than one's own family.

This does not add up to "you have a direct moral responsibility for the entire planet", but it does legitimate kinds of international charity. If those with whom I have a natural bond (e.g. a family relation), or a civic bond (e.g. if we are members of the same nation), or a spiritual bond (e.g. we are both Christians) reside far away geographically, I may still possess duties of charity towards them.

The case for extending this even to non-believers in certain circumstances seems fairly straightforward to me (cf. Matthew 5:47), in a way that does not create an infinite obligation, but does suggest that doing good even for those to whom one shares no connection is supererogatorily good. Aquinas appears to agree that need is sufficient to create a kind of moral claim, which must be judged carefully alongside the claims created by connection or proximity:

For it must be understood that, other things being equal, one ought to succor those rather who are most closely connected with us. And if of two, one be more closely connected, and the other in greater want, it is not possible to decide, by any general rule, which of them we ought to help rather than the other, since there are various degrees of want as well as of connection: and the matter requires the judgment of a prudent man.